Questioning college

William Hageman, Tribune Newspaper

As the economy tanked over the last couple of years, the wisdom of a college education became increasingly debated.

There is the cost. Tuition and fees alone at four-year public schools average $8,244 for in-state students and $20,770 for out-of-staters, and four-year private institutions average $28,500, according to the College Board.

Graduates enter the workforce in a financial hole, with more than two-thirds leaving with student debt, according to the financial aid website FinAid.org. Among bachelor's degree recipients who graduated with debt in 2011, the average student-loan debt was $27,200, excluding parent loans, said Mark Kantrowitz, the site's publisher.

And there is the prospect of coming out of school with a virtually worthless degree. Four of the top five occupations projected to see the greatest job growth through 2020 do not require a college degree, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. The four are personal care aides, home health aides, medical secretaries and medical assistants, which reflect an aging population. The only one to require a degree is registered nurses.

The question needs to be asked: Is college worth it?

"The answer has to be framed as, in comparison to what?" said Richard Arum, co-author of 2011's "Academically Adrift: Limited Learning on College Campuses" and lead researcher on a recently released study that looked at 925 four-year college graduates, most of whom were two years out of school. "The alternative is an increasingly dismal outcome," Arum said. "And the economic payoff of the credential, study after study have demonstrated, is it's a worthwhile investment, even with large loans taken out."

A fledgling movement

Some aren't so sure, pointing out the success and innovation of college dropouts such as Steve Jobs, Bill Gates and Mark Zuckerberg.

Dale J. Stephens last year created UnCollege (uncollege.org), which claims 10,000 members and calls itself a "social movement changing the notion that going to college is the only path to success." The site emphasizes that it's not against college but that people can "get an amazing education anywhere" through life experiences and self-learning.

"Finding success outside school means defining your own values," Stephens, 20, said via email. Yet, he said, "It's false to say that everyone who drops out will become a successful entrepreneur."

Arum's new study, conducted last spring, reexamines students first profiled in "Academically Adrift." In their book, Arum and co-author Josipa Roksa tracked 2,300 students and found that their academic improvement through two years of college was limited. The new report found that students who finished their college careers with higher scores on the Collegiate Learning Assessment, an online tool that academic institutions use to measure critical thinking, writing and other skills, made a better transition to the workplace:

Graduates who scored in the bottom quintile of the CLA were three times more likely to be jobless than those in the top quintile;

Better-scoring students were half as likely to be living with their parents;

Graduates in the bottom quintile were more likely to have run up credit card debt.

Further evidence of the benefits of a college degree surfaced in a Pew Research Center report released in May. In the survey, 57 percent of the 2,142 adults questioned said the higher education system fails to give students a good value, and 75 percent said college is too expensive. Yet 86 percent of college graduates surveyed, which included 336 adults up to age 34, said college had been a good investment for them; 74 percent said college helped them grow intellectually; and 55 percent said it was very useful in helping prepare for a job or career.

Some benefits of college aren't as obvious.

Last year, the Advocacy & Policy Center of the College Board, whose members include colleges, universities, high schools and nonprofit organizations, rolled out Five Ways Ed Pays, an initiative that points out to parents and students some of the hidden benefits of college, such as better health and greater civic engagement.

Individuals between 25 and 34 with a college degree, for example, are 70 percent more likely to engage in vigorous exercise than those with just a high school education. Sixty-eight percent of degree holders had employer-provided health care insurance; just 50 percent of the high school graduates did.

Life quality and education

Anne Sturtevant, an executive at the College Board, cited some unexpected benefits.

"The Education Pays chart shows the more education you have, the more you earn," she said. "But it also shows how much more you pay in taxes. If you don't have an educated workforce, taxes (paid) will be less and less. If you're not healthy, your medical costs will go up.

"Those are the kinds of correlations between the quality of life we have now and will have in the future, and how we need to close that gap between the people who traditionally go to college and those who traditionally don't."

Some believe that college isn't the answer, at least not college as we know it and at least not for everybody.

Ohio University professor Richard Vedder, an economist, historian and author, has been a critic of the costs of higher education and the inefficiencies of the college system. He sees a need for America to rethink the idea.

In an interview last year with PBS, Vedder pointed out that as many as 1 in 3 college graduates are in jobs they didn't need a degree for, "jobs that do not require higher-level learning skills, critical thinking skills or writing skills, or anything of that nature."

In their book, Arum and Roksa argued that the character of undergraduate education needs to be examined. "A large number of students are able to move through college today with very little asked of them, very little investment of their own time in terms of study, and very little improvement in their general competencies," Arum said.

Some have found a way to get an education without the diploma.

"I've interviewed people from all walks of life, doing all kinds of things, from VPs at banks to DJs, who have found success without institutions," said Stephens, the UnCollege creator.

Last year, Stephens' ideas won him a Thiel Fellowship, a $100,000 prize from PayPal co-founder Peter Thiel designed to encourage young entrepreneurs to leave school and develop a venture. Stephens was already out the door at Hendrix College in Arkansas. He said he considers college "limiting and privileged," and asked, "How can you find yourself when other people are paying your bills, cleaning your bathrooms and cooking your meals?"